English is a Queer Language Essay Example
English is a Queer Language Essay Example

English is a Queer Language Essay Example

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  • Pages: 4 (867 words)
  • Published: November 13, 2016
  • Type: Essay
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Jarmila came to me with this puzzle. “Mrs. Green told me her mother is coming to visit her, and she is going to stay a week. How can she stay if she is going? How can she go if she is staying? ” I could not explain, because never before had I realized that “going” may have nothing to do with the verb “to go,” though the latter has its own present participle which seems identical. This other “going” deals only with the future: I am going to see this matter through; he is going to lose his job; she is going to be tired out.

None of these examples have anything to do with “to go”. All I could say was a helpless “Well, it is idiomatic. ” The next question

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was also a surprise and also beyond my capacity to explain. Jarmila said, “Somebody asked me if I would not miss Miss Clara while she is away. I know what it means when you say you miss the bus, but how can I miss her when she is not here? ” Her next question was even more difficult. Jarmila said, “Is it true that it I means the same thing if you say, ‘The house burned down’ or ‘The house burned up’?

Surely if it burned up, that means the fire started in the cellar and worked up, while if it burned down, it started in the attic and worked down. ” “No,” I said, “it does not. You can say it either way and it means the same thing. ” Jarmila sighed. “I do not understand this “up,�

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I thought I knew the difference between up and down, but they tell me if is the same if I slow up my car or slow it down. And there are so many ‘up’s that seem quite unnecessary. Why do they tell me to hurry up when I am not going upstairs? And why must I clean up the mess, wrap up the parcel, tidy up my desk?

What has ‘up’ to do with it all? ” “Well,” I began, rather helplessly, “perhaps ‘clean up’ seems more thorough than just ‘clean. ’” Jarmila looked skeptical, and after a period of meditation, she came back in triumph. “No,” she said. “’Up’ has nothing to do with thoroughness. Look now. There are four ways you can use ‘make up. ’ I make up the bed. I make up my mind. I make up my face when I put on rouge and lipstick. And Jane makes up with Anne when they have quarreled. ”

“Yes,” I said, “and there is a fifth. I make up a story to entertain Jane. Of course there was no explanation I could give her, and it sent me and the rest of the family on a search for the unnecessary “up”s we use all the time. You can put yourself to sleep chasing them down the alphabet from “add up” to “wake up,” and you will find queer things, such as “up to now” and “it’s up to you” and two “lookup”s, one meaning to raise one’s eyes, the other to seek information from the encyclopedia. In the end, I gave up trying to explain “up”. What about “must”? There

too the problem was quite new to me.

Jarmila said, “Does not “must” carry the meaning of compulsion or command, from oneself or somebody else? But the other day I was telling some of the neighbors how long it took me to drive to Hammonnassett Beach, and one of them said, “You must have been pretty tired by the time you reached home. ” Now nobody commanded me to lose my way or to get tired. So why ‘must’? ” The next problem was a tough one. Bohus came back from work saying that a man had told him that if he learned all the ways there are in English of using the word “get” he would have mastered the language.

That started us on a hunt for “get,” which yielded a more abundant harvest than did Jarmila’s “up. ” Just try to follow “get” down the alphabet from “get along with somebody” to “get well. ” Of course we get sick, too, we get ahead of somebody, get behind in our work, get even with somebody, get homesick, get cold feet, get discharged, get rich, and so on. Jarmila and Bohus became experts at finding English words that can mean three or four or more different things.

Take “fall”, for instance, we fall in love, we fall sick, we love the fall of the year, we fear the fall-out from the atomic bomb, Christmas Day falls on a Friday. And if we are old-fashioned enough to say “it fell out,” we mean “it came to pass. ” What’s more, we keep house, we keep books, we keep silence, we keep the

Sabbath day in the family. We put on a hat, put off till tomorrow, put out a fire, put up with disagreeable people. Even so simple an expression as “back and forth” arouses confusion, because it is illogical. “One can not go back if one does not first go forth. Why do you not say ‘forth and back’? ”

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